Here’s What Happened When Naftali Bennett Spoke at Princeton

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Danielle Shapiro is a Princeton student who came out to hear former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speak about both his year-length tenure as Prime Minister from June 2021 to July 1, 2022, and on the Israeli government since October 7, 2023. Alas, campus brownshirts disrupted the event and prevented the freedom of speech that they have been so loudly proclaiming must be defended in the case of the terrorist-supporting Columbia student, Mahmoud Khalil. More on the event, that took place on April 7, can be found here: “I Was Called an ‘Inbred Swine’ at Princeton Last Night,” by Danielle Shapiro, The Free Press, April 8, 2025:

Last night at Princeton, Jewish students were called “inbred swine,” told to “go back to Europe,” and taunted with gestures of the Hamas triangle by masked protesters. Sadly, slurs like these have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests at my college in the months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, but university president Christopher Eisgruber insists he is “proud of the campus climate at Princeton.”

What would it take for him to question that belief?

The latest outrage was sparked by a visit from former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. More than 200 students had turned up to hear Bennett talk about his time as prime minister from 2021 to 2022 and the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu post–October 7.

Days before Bennett arrived, the Princeton chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had plastered posters all over campus, calling him a “war criminal,” and flooded listservs and social media with messages saying the college was “complicit in normalizing his murderous policies.” SJP students publicly declared that “Bennett should be in prison, not at Princeton.” Never mind that he was the first Israeli PM to form a coalition with the Arab party in the Knesset. Or that Princeton’s Hillel and four other organizations had invited him to the talk in good faith. All students who registered for the event were encouraged to submit questions in advance; only those with a Princeton ID were able to register.

Around 7 p.m. on Monday, anti-Israel protesters gathered at the campus’s flagship building, Nassau Hall, and then marched, while banging drums and shouting into microphones, toward McCosh Hall, where Bennett started giving his remarks at 7:30 p.m. I settled into a seat to hear him talk. About 20 minutes into his speech, around 25 students stood up in unison and shouted at Bennett, “War criminal!” “We charge you with genocide!” and other exclamations before walking out en masse.

This was Part One of the attempt to disrupt the speaker and upset, too, those students who had come to hear him. Bennett kept his cool, and returned to his talk, but no doubt students who had come to hear him must have been a bit rattled.

Five minutes later, the social media activist Sayel Kayed, who does not hold a Princeton ID, stood up and yelled at Bennett: “Now you’re committing a holocaust!” and “You killed 60,000 Palestinians!” He kept shouting until free-speech facilitators asked him to leave and then removed him from the event. (In 2015, Princeton adopted the University of Chicago’s free speech guidelines, which state that no single person’s right to speak overrides the right of others to learn from the main speaker at a lecture or event.)

What was the “activist” Sayel Kayed doing at Bennett’s talk? All those present were supposed to be students or faculty at Princeton; he was neither, but a pro-Hamas agitator who had no Princeton ID or connection. How did the campus security allow him into the event? In the careful choreography of the disrupters, he leapt up exactly five minutes after the first group of students had shouted against the speaker and then noisily left the hall.

Ten minutes later, a fire alarm went off. Clearly, there was no fire. We sat in confusion until two Princeton rabbis started singing Jewish songs as many of us joined in. But, by then, the event was pretty much over. Later that night, SJP claimed responsibility for pulling the alarm, stating on social media: “Genocide alarm activated.”

The third movement in this ghastly symphony of hate consisted of a fire alarm going off, and continuing to emit year-splitting noise that effectively prevented Naftali Bennett from completing his already twice-iinterrupted talk.

As we filed out of the building, the protest had swelled to around 100, with most people wearing masks and many yelling at us: “You’re committing a holocaust!” and “You’re killing babies!” Multiple students, myself included, were told to “go back to Europe.” We also heard many shouts of “They’re all fucking inbred!” and “inbred swine!” At least two or three protesters used their hands to create the shape of the Hamas triangle.

Naftali Bennett did manage to completely shut down a heckler — presumably the outside “activist” with no Princeton connection, Sayel Kayed, at his Princeton University talk, by noting that:

Instead of whining for the past 80 years and building your own future, you have focused on killing the Jews. It’s time for the Palestinians to stop whining and build their own future.

Will Princeton discipline the twenty-five students who came to the talk not to listen, but only in order to disrupt it by standing up 20 minutes into the talk, and exiting in unison from the lecture hall while noisily shouting at the speaker and the students? Will the heckler who has no Princeton connection and stood up to yell at Naftali Bennett be charged with criminal trespass? And what about the person who pulled the fire alarm? In New Jersey, pulling a fire alarm when there is no fire is a felony, that may result in a fine or prison, or both. Finally, what about the crowd of 100 anti-Israel “activists” who stood outside the exit to the building and yelling, as the audience streamed out, “you’re committing a holocaust” and “you’re killing babies” and “go back to Europe.” Will they be charged with any infraction of university rules? Could their screams aimed at Jews be considered “hate crimes”?

The president of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber has previously insisted he is “proud of the campus climate at Princeton.”

In light of all that happened to Naftali Bennett and his audience on April 7, when he tried to speak about his own experiences as a former prime minister and about the Israeli government today, and was subject first to a walkout of 25 students (who had come not to listen but to disrupt by leaving) who, as they left in unison, shouted their curses at Bennett: “War criminal” and “We charge you with genocide,” and then — five minutes after they left — a lone heckler with no Princeton connection stood up to scream at Bennett about his taking part in a “holocaust,” and finally, someone pulled a fire alarm in the building to make it impossible for Bennett to be heard, thus forcing the event to end, would President Eisgruber wish to reconsider his “pride” in the campus climate at Princeton?